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FierceWiFi November 30, 2005
- 802.11n plot thickens as January IEEE decision nears
- Netgear settles suit over exaggerated WiFi speed claims
- ST shows solution for pico-cell base-station modems
- New Orleans to offer first-in-nation free muni-WiFi
- Metric: 100M WiFi chipsets sold in 2005
- SPOTLIGHT: Citius altius fortius
- ALSO NOTED: Nokia 9300i; New Zealand bypasses regs for WiMax spectrum; and much more...
802.11n plot thickens as January IEEE decision nears
Last summer the IEEE almost reached an agreement on the specifications of 802.11n, but then things got discombobulated as the haggling between the two rival coalitions continued and a third proposal was offered. There was an IEEE meeting in Vancouver last week, but nothing much happened there to advance the cause of an agreed-upon standard. There is going to be a vote on the standard in January, though, and smart money says that the IEEE will go with a joint proposal that combines the …
Netgear settles suit over exaggerated WiFi speed claims
Even allowing for the typical embellishments in advertising, Netgear's claims about the performance of its pre-802.11n equipment were always suspect. Some customers found that the suspicion was justified and decided to do something about it: They launched a class-action lawsuit charging the company with exaggerating the data speeds of its WiFi networking devices. The company has agreed to settle these claims.
In its last week's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission …
ST shows solution for pico-cell base-station modems
STMicroelectronics (ST) has unveiled what it claims is the industry's most comprehensive solution for pico-cell base-station modems. The STW51000 combines the performance of SoC baseband processor with multi-standard software libraries, optimized for GSM, EDGE, W-CDMA, and WiMax networks. ST said it has tested and specified the device to be used with 20 concurrent
voice users in a Release 4 WCDMA network.
ST's device should be of interest to business. Pico-cell base stations …
New Orleans to offer first-in-nation free muni-WiFi
Talk of a silver lining: The city of New Orleans is about to deploy the nation's first municipally owned wireless Internet system which will be free for all users. The deployment is part of the effort to accelerate the city's recovery by making living and doing business in New Orleans as appealing as possible. Telephone and cable companies have opposed such muni-WiFi systems in other cities as unfair, taxpayer-funded competition; moreover, Louisiana prohibits any locality from offering …
Metric: 100M WiFi chipsets sold in 2005
Staid Alan Greenspan talked of "irrational exuberance" to describe the late-1990s dot-com craze, and almost-as-staid research group In-Stat says that consumers and businesses alike have shown an "insatiable demand" for wireless networking technology, thus helping drive up annual unit sales of WiFi equipment to more than 100 million chipsets in six years. In-Stat estimates that WiFi device shipments are enjoying an "explosive" 64 percent average yearly growth rate. "WiFi has already …
SPOTLIGHT: Citius altius fortius
What with the growing demand for high-quality multimedia services, consumers need greater communication speeds. How do we get them? Some approaches (think 802.11n) try to do so by enhancing existing standards to increase efficiency. Other approaches (think UWB and cognitive radio) are pursuing more aggressive strategies such as sharing spectra with other users. As we reported a few weeks ago, another approach is to follow what we have always done in the past: Move to higher, unused …
ALSO NOTED: Nokia 9300i; New Zealand bypasses regs for WiMax spectrum; and much more...
> Nokia will offer the Nokia 9300i, which incorporates WLAN connectivity with a full keyboard and 65,536-color screen. Report
> Samsung has released its latest WiFi cellphone, the SPH-V6800, but only for Korean customers. Article
> Sony Playstation Portable 2.6 firmware adds WMA and WiFi Podcast streaming support. …